Michael Nyqvist, star of the films based on Stieg Larsson's The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo trilogy, has died after a fight with lung cancer.

Beloved Swedish star Michael Nyqvist has died. With 57 films and televisions series to his name at the time of his death, Nyqvist died on June 27, 2017 with another three films in production or ready for release, following a year-long battle with lung cancer. He was 56.

Born Rolf Åke Mikael Nyqvist in Stockholm, Sweden, his hopes for a career in hockey were derailed when he was injured by a puck to the face as a teenager. When he was 17, Nyqvist was as an exchange student in Omaha, Nebraska, where he took his first acting classes and played a part in Death of a Salesman that would shape his future. When he returned to Sweden, he studied ballet and theater, and at 19 years old was accepted into the Swedish Academic School of Drama in Malmö.

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The accolades, awards and nominations flowed from the beginning and Nyqvist became one of Sweden’s most respected and accomplished actors, best known internationally for his role as investigative reporter Mikael Blomkvist in The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo trilogy, an adaptation of the late Stieg Larsson’s smash Millennium book series. Among many other notable credits, he also made a number of high-profile forays in American film, playing the villain in “Mission: Impossible — Ghost Protocol” and starring as Viggo Tarasov in “John Wick.”

Nyqvist was also a writer who published two memoirs, Just After Dreaming (“När barnet lagt sig”), 2011 and Dance for us (“Dansa för oss”), 2013.
In Just After Dreaming, Nyqvist described his childhood and quest to find his biological parents — his Swedish mother and Italian father; he did eventually develop a relationship with his father and his family.
Nyqvist is married to set designer Catharina Ehrnrooth and has two adult children, Ellen and Arthur.